“It is easy to jump out of the village, move to the cities, and spend your time poking fun at the little places we hail from and their routine ways, but deep down inside you know that's where the real people are, the truly decent souls, and you fight and fight to deny it, until you need them so bad it hurts." p.223Brendan..... I get it!”
“I know a few things about ghosts. The only way to stop them getting inside you is to spend every second of the day thinking about something else. Fighting like that makes you tired, and it doesn't matter how hard you fight anyway. They chip till they make a crack, and before you know it there's a ghost squatter in your living room. It's hard to get them out. Hard because they settle in. Hard because you like the company.”
“Of course we got drunk!" Semyon said. "It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart.""So what's vodka for?""For the soul. If it's hurting real bad”
“Just don't go out fighting. I don't need to know where you're going, that's your biz. But if you get yourself killed, I got ninety-nine problems and you're the biggest one of them." Rehv to John”
“At some stage in your life you need to stop fighting for others and look at who fights for you. Only then you will truly know who to cherish and who to fight for.”
“It's nice to live in that world inside your head that abides by your little idealist wishes, ya know, where everyone is straight up about their intentions and never uses people or lies about anything. But seriously, that ain't how this shit works, and the quicker you get that and stop throwing these rushed judgments onto people who are living a life that you have no fucking clue about what it feels to live, then you'll actually be ready for the shit that's gonna get tossed your way. Once you get that people are always gonna let you down and hurt you in some capacity, that's when you actually start to cultivate something real with them.”